Harrikin suddenly spoke up. ‘I wouldn’t want to just sink down in the muck of the river bottom. I’d give myself to Ranculos. I want everyone here to know that now. If something does befall me, give my body to my dragon.’

‘Same for me,’ Kase said, and predictably Boxter echoed him with a, ‘Same.’

‘And I,’ Sylve chimed, ‘I am Mercor’s, in life or death.’

‘Of course,’ Jerd conceded, and Greft added, ‘For me, also.’

The assents rounded the circle of gathered keepers. When it came back to her, Thymara bit her lip and held her silence. Sintara reared up out of the water, standing briefly on her hind legs to look down on her. ‘What?’ she demanded of the girl.

Thymara looked up at her. ‘I belong to myself,’ she said quietly. ‘To get, you must give, Sintara.’

‘I saved you from the river!’ The dragon’s outraged trumpeting split the darkening sky.

‘And I have served you from the day I met you,’ Thymara replied. ‘But I do not feel that our bond is complete. So I will hold my thoughts until such time as a decision must be made. And then I will leave it up to my fellow keepers.’

‘Insolent human! Do you think that you—’

‘Another time.’ Mercor cut into their quarrel. ‘Render to Baliper what is his.’

‘Warken wouldn’t have had a problem with it,’ Lecter said decidedly. He straightened from where he’d been leaning on the railing. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘I’ll help,’ Tats said quietly.

‘Keepers’ decision,’ Leftrin announced, as if they had waited for his permission. ‘Swarge will show you how to use a plank to slide his body over the side. If you want words said, I’ll say them.’

‘There should be words,’ Lecter said. ‘Warken’s mother would want that.’

And so it went, and Thymara watched it unfold and wondered at the strange little community they had become. I am and am not a part of this, she thought to herself as she listened to Leftrin say his simple words and then watched Warken’s body slip over the railing on a plank. She wanted to turn her head away from what would happen next but somehow she could not. She needed to see it, she told herself. Needed to see how the keepers and their dragons had become so intertwined that such an outrageous and macabre request could be seen as reasonable and even inevitable.

Baliper was waiting. The body slid out from under its draping and as it entered the river, the dragon ducked his head and seized it. He lifted Warken, his head and feet dangling out either side of his mouth and carried him off. The other dragons, she noted, did not follow him, but turned away and half-swam, half-waded back to the shallows at the edge of the river. Baliper disappeared upriver into the darkness with his keeper’s body. So it was not a simple devouring of meat that humans would otherwise discard. It meant something, not just to Warken’s dragon, but to all of them. It was important enough to them that when Baliper’s demand had been initially refused, they had massed and made it plain that they would not let him be denied.

The other keepers reminded her of the dragons. They dispersed quietly from their places along the railings. No one wept, but it did not mean no one wished to. Seeing Warken dead, really dead, had brought home the reality of Rapskal’s absence. He was gone, and the chances were that if she saw him again he would be like Warken, battered and bloated and still.

The keepers congregated in small groups. Jerd was with Greft, of course. Sylve was with Harrikin and Lecter. Boxter and Kase, the cousins, moved as one as they always did. Nortel trailed after them. And she stood apart from all of them, as she so often seemed to do. The only one who had refused her dragon. The only one who never seemed to know what rules the group had discarded and which ones they kept. Her back ached abominably, she was river-scalded and insect-bitten, and the loneliness that filled her up from the inside threatened to crack her body. She missed Alise’s company, but now that they were back on the barge and she had her captain’s attention, she probably wouldn’t want to spend time with Thymara.

And she missed Rapskal, with a keenness that shocked her.

‘Are you all right?’

She turned, startled to discover Tats standing at her side. ‘I suppose I am. That was a hard, strange thing, wasn’t it?’

‘In some ways, it was the simplest solution. And Lecter had spent a lot of time with Warken; they partnered in the boats most days. So I’m willing to believe that he knew what Warken would have wanted.’

‘I’m sure he did,’ Thymara replied quietly.

They stood for a time, staring over the river. The dragons had dispersed. Thymara could still feel, like a fire radiating cold, Sintara’s anger with her. She didn’t care. Her skin hurt all over, the injury between her shoulders burned, and she didn’t belong anywhere.

‘I can’t even go home.’

Tats didn’t ask what she meant. ‘None of us can. None of us were ever really at home in Trehaug. This, here, on this barge tonight, this is as close to home as any of us have. Alise and Captain Leftrin and his crew included.’

‘But I don’t fit in, even here.’

‘You could if you chose to, Thymara. You’re the one keeping a distance.’ He moved his hand, not putting it over hers, but setting it on the railing beside hers so that his hand touched hers.

Her first impulse was to move her hand away. By an effort, she didn’t. She wondered both why she had wanted to move it away, and why she hadn’t. She didn’t have an answer to either question, so she asked Tats a question of her own. ‘Do you know what Greft said to me about you?’

The corner of his mouth quirked. ‘No. But I’m sure it wasn’t flattering. And I hope you recalled that you know me far better than Greft can ever hope to.’

So at least it hadn’t been a male conspiracy to get the lone uncommitted female to make a choice. That made her opinion of her fellow keepers rise slightly. She kept her voice level and noncommittal as if she were speaking about how pleasant the night was. ‘He came out when I was on watch last night and asked if I’d chosen you. He explained that if I had, I’d best declare it clearly, or let him know at least so that he could enforce my choice with the others. He said, otherwise, there might be a lot of competition. That some of the other keepers might even challenge you or start fights with you.’

‘Greft is a pompous ass who thinks he can speak for everyone,’ Tats said after a profound silence. Just as she was ready to dismiss her experience with Greft as an aberration, he added, ‘But I’d like it if you said to everyone that you had chosen me. He’s right about that; it would make things simpler.’

‘What “things” would it make simpler?’

He gave her a sideways glance. They both knew he was treading on shaky ground now. ‘Well. One thing is that it would give me an answer. One that I’d like to have. And another is—’

‘You’ve never even asked me a question,’ she broke in. She spoke hastily, and was appalled to realize that she’d just pushed them deeper into the quagmire.

She wanted to run away, to get away from this stupidity that stupid Greft had triggered with his stupid lecture. Tats seemed to know that. He put his callused hand over hers. She could feel the softness of his palm against the scaled back of her hand. The warmth from that touch flooded through her and for a moment her breath caught. Her mind flashed to Jerd and Greft, entwined and moving together. No. She forbade the thought and reminded herself that her hand under his was probably cold, slick with scales, like a fish. He did not look down at the hand he had captured. He took a breath and puffed it out. ‘It’s not a question. Not a specific question. It’s, well, I’d like to have what Greft and Jerd have.’

So would she.

No! Of course she didn’t. She denied the thought.

‘What Jerd and Greft have? You mean mating?’ She didn’t completely succeed in keeping accusation out of her voice.